We saw Everest today! The way from Nyalam to Tingri goes on around an altitude of 4200 meters. There is a 5100 m-long pass on the way. When we came to this pass, we first saw ‘Shishapangma’ from the distance. Afterwards as we were continuing on the high dry, and dusty way, they suddenly appeared opposite to us. We asked our driver, with whom we couldn’t communicate in a common language, by pointing it out. He shook his head and first pointed to the mountain on the right “Cho Yu”, after that he pointed his hand to the one on the left: “Chomolungma”. Even though Everest is yet very far away, it looks pretty majestic and beautiful. We can’t know if it saw us, but we recorded its posture to our memories and took pictures of it.

We arrived at Tingi after a 4 to 5 hours’ trip. Our hotel here is a bit different. 8 people are staying at a place that looks like a room of a village house. The girls are staying at a small motel room that has a separate entrance. The rooms are a bit too ragged and dirty, but whatever, we saw Everest today!

Finally we started doing stuff resembling mountaineering! Today we went on a short trekking which will be beneficiary for our acclimatization. We climbed “Nyalam Ri”, namely “Nyalam Mountain”, the 4400 m-high mountain rising just beneath Nyalam. The day brightens here only at 8:00. That’s why our climbing plan was actualized at a bit different time than we’re used to. We started off in a quite cold weather, afterwards we ascended in a quite sunny and nice weather. Dawa Sherpa climbed with us too and colored our day with his interesting stories. The different traditions of Tibetian and Nepalese people amazed us yet again. The people of hereabouts view life and death utterly differently than we do. Very unpretentious, concrete, too realistic and as much as that, abstract, spiritual and individualistic...

Today besides, we learned that our climb has a brand new and nice dimension. According to the Tibetian calender each year is determined by an animal, during the year, the course of events is set by the characteristics of that animal. 2006 is the “dog” year, the sherpas think that it will be a positive and lucky year, this year. They think that the dog with fire coming out of its mouth in the ‘Petrol Ofisi’ logo is an indication of that. Apparently, this year by these PO stickers we’ll be regarded as sacred by whole Tibet!

Nyalam We started to ascend. Today we arrived at Nyalam town which is at 3750 meters. We’re ascending but by the skills of jeeps! Here we’re staying at a very cute hotel. A building mostly made of wood that is painted and decorated in chinese style. A place for people who’ve come to the mountains rather than for local tourists. Our rooms are tiny, out of sheer luck the girls have nice rooms with a fine view! The rest of the team are staying at a bit darker rooms. Luck! The food is still great, we are eating at tables and with methods completely in line with Chinese traditions and methods. The food comes to the middle of the table, they are put on the turning part of the table, we are taking our bowls rotating this platform. Our food sessions are a big event, almost none of us can eat all of these delicious foods! Some can’t catch the speed and hold the plate; some starve because they can’t catch the rice grains with the sticks; some try to follow the traditional order and take each sort one by one and thus can’t eat anything else than rice and finally some end up hungry out of the effort to put the chaos in an order! Yet we are very happy about the food. At the hotel except us there is a quite crowdy international expedition group. All of them watch us in astonishment, sometimes we ask ourselves whether we are a too active team. Tomorrow we’re here too, we’ll have a short trekking. In the meanwhile we learned about a new progress, Ahmet Cemal Saydam will be sending us the weather forecast. It’s a really important support on our side.

Today finally we are in Tibet! In one day we both changed the country and, at once, moved to a 5-hour time difference by two steps. We are a bit further away from home. We set off very early in the morning. We came to the Nepal-China border bridge in 5 and a half hours by bus. We got off the bus and emptied all of the luggage. We crossed the border walking. On the other side, in Tibet, this time we moved to other vehicles and went to Zangmu town. All this took us several hours. The places we went through throughout the day were breathtaking. We moved through a deep valley, beside a river, green and steep slopes. Zangmu is a border town, a small cute place. We are staying at a clean but old and neglected hotel. The food is plentiful and tasty, for only one meal we eat all sorts of Chinese food. The gist we are in high spirits!

Today is our last day at Katmandu. At 9 am, we, the whole team and our Sherpa friends, joined the Lama blessing. The Lama blessing is a tradition that all expeditors attend before they go to the mountains. Prayer flags to be taken to the mountain are brought to the Lama. Besides, the team members take their scarfs called ‘kata’ with them. Lama blesses all of them and and makes good wishes and luck prayers. We gave Lama our ‘kata’s one by one, and he wished us luck hanging the ‘kata’s around our neck. In addition, plait strings in green, yellow, and red colors were hung around our neck. We went to the monastery after Lama, and even though shortly, we saw a ritual of Buddhist monks. It was really impressive. Thus our climb was blessed. We had t-shirts made with our names and Buddhist lucky eye figures on it for our whole Sherpa team and ourselves. As of now we are an even larger team together with them...

Today was our touring day. We started our Katmandu tour at 10 a.m. Hereabouts continue to be colorful, chaotic, and impressive. We went to sights in Katmandu and around. We got to know Hinduizm and Budizm. And certainly, at the same time the nice and poor people of Nepal..

Tonight we’ll be having a meeting dinner with the rest of the team. We are all together with our sherpa friends, the other climbers of the team. If we could make a live connection to Turkey we would have gathered the whole team together.

March 29th, 2006

After the most peaceful night within the last days, we woke up to a Nepalese morning. After breakfast, we first talked to a media agent who was compiling information about all expeditions at Katmandu. After that, the communications, energy, food responsibles and Serhan had a preliminary meeting with Arun Expeditions. The rest wandered in Katmandu streets and did shopping. Katmandu is very colorful, very touristy, and full of contradicitons but beautiful...

We woke up at 04:00 in the morning and left for the airport at 05:00. Our plane took off at 07:25. Around 14:30 we were at Kadmandu. We were welcome by an officer who takes care of the consulate relations. The cargo went into our hands without any hassle. We left the airport with our luggage. Outside the airport, this time there were people from Arun Trek. We came to our hotel with all of our luggage. Katmandu streets welcomed us colorfully. And our hotel welcomed us with a huge banner whıch reads “Welcome to all the members of 2006 Everest Turkish Expedition”. It was surely an impressive welcome!

We left Turkey. The rush continued until we got on the plane. Lots of our close friends came to see us off at the airport. We left them all behind, tears in their eyes...First we flew to Bahrain from Istanbul. But we left Istanbul with an one and a half hour of delay. We arrived at Bahrain around 20:30 Turkish time. We went to a hotel to stay overnight. The rooms where big and comfortable, but we were a bit noisy. There’s no time difference between Bahrain and Istanbul.